Need help on buying new D.I.Y PC.

[MaMister]

I have a friend who uses excel speadsheets heavy duty type, he will open up like 20 plus worksheets at a time.....

It started to hang and crash after the 20 sheets onwards....

So he upgraded to 768MB RAM, before that was 256MB, and it crash a little less time but still crash sometimes and slow too...

Currently, he is using :
P4 2.4Ghz (478)
768MB RAM
80GB harddisk with 8MB buffer
Onboard VGA with 32MB

Please recommend me a super computer specs. that can help him work with breeze.....

 

[essasin]

What do you mean by "super computer?" Thats a dangerous word to describe a computer. What is his budget? Granted it a very high end computer one still could spend 1k on a fx60 and anohter 1k on a quadro video card. That is 2k just for a cpu and video card.

For a more realistic approach I would get suggest
1. getting good processing power (opteron 165)
2. 2 gigs of ram(ocz, mushkin, g.skill)
3. a decent video card (7600, 7900gt, or even a quadro card)
4. pci video card
6. spend the rest of the money on multiple lcd screens and I mean multiple

 

[bendixG15]

It may be a software problem and not hardware.

 

[Ike0069]

Without a budget, this is pointless.

 

[GrammatonJP]

excel sucks.. its single threaded and doens't benefit from dual cores or multithreaded cpu..

I would get 1 single fastest cpu. My shop is heavy excel shop.. 20-40 mb excel sheets.

We use dual 3.2 xeon with 4gb ram per workstation.. they held up since 2 years ago.. was a big investment and since our sheets hasn't increase in size, we had no problems..

we only got the dual because we had many other applications in addition to excel. Java is also another memory hog

2gb if only excel, 4gb if excel + java apps.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: Ike0069
Without a budget, this is pointless.

:thumbsup:

 

[nycdude]

maybe he needs more ram if he's opening that many windows

 

[Bobthelost]

More RAM first of all, then just get a faster CPU for the motherboard. I'm assuming that overclocking isn't going to happen?

 

[MaMister]

Thanks guys,

Now I think I have some idea but please correct me if I am wrong.

1. Still get single core cpu lilke : P4 3.0 640 (775) and above as GrammatonJP says
"excel sucks.. its single threaded and doens't benefit from dual cores or multithreaded cpu" (Actually, I wanted to get dual cores.... )

2. Get at least 1 GB of RAM. (will dual channel helps? or just normal type?)

3. Accord to essasin, why is PCI video needed, he means PCI-express right? If AGP is ok think normal AGP 128MB or 256MB will do?

4. Will the harddisk buffer size help if higher? Like 8 or 16MB?

Finally, as long as it works I think he is willing to pay.....

 

[bamacre]

Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450Watt SmartPower PSU
$106.99
http://tinyurl.com/n75b4

EPOX EP-5P945-J 945P P4/Celeron D 1066FSB LGA775 DDR2 ATX Motherboard
$96.75
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=246606

Pentium® D Processor 940 3.2GHz, 800MHz FSB, Socket 775, 2x2MB Cache, Dual Core Retail
$257.00
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80852

Corsair VS2GBKIT667D2 2GB Kit DDR2-667 PC2-5300 Value Select Memory Retail
$147.50
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=85016-47

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB Serial ATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer
$91.99
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101220-12

BenQ 16X DVD±R DVD Burner
$35.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827101010

BFG 3DFuzion GeForce 6200 LE PCI Express 128MB DDR Video Card w/DVI, VGA & S-Video Retail
$44.50
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=326040

Total Price Shipped:
$780.72